Rashid is hired to appear at rallies because nobody ever believes the politicians, “even though they pretended as hard as they could that they were telling the truth…everybody had complete faith in Rashid, because he always admitted that everything he told them was completely untrue.” Voters, in other words, can tell the difference between hollow political rhetoric and truth, even when that truth is wrapped up in fiction. Mr Rushdie suggests that traditional stories-the vehicle by which ancient civilisations passed down wisdom from one generation to the next-contain truths that elevate them above mere make-believe. To tell stories with “that extra ingredient,” however, a person needs access to the story-waters of Kahani. Liars and cheats and crooks, for example,” one character tells Haroun. The book makes no bones about the fact that stories can be misused in the service of religious or political aims. “Inside every story,” he says, “there lies a world, a story-world, that I cannot rule at all.” They are ruled by a terrifying master called Khattam-Shud (“completely finished”), “the arch-enemy of all stories, even of language itself”, who fears the power of words so much that he is slowly poisoning the ocean. Haroun soon finds himself caught up in the war between Kahani’s inhabitants, the Guppees (“gossips”), whose job is to protect and maintain the sea of stories, and the Chupwalas (“quiet fellows”), who live in total silence and darkness. Determined to restore his father’s creative ability, Haroun travels to a hidden moon called Kahani (Hindi for “story”), which is covered with an ocean of stories, each tale a fluid strand of colour that can intermingle with others to create new ones. He blends Hindi words with the English text, and scatters the narrative with puns, jokes and references to other stories.
Much of the joy of Mr Rushdie’s book lies in his playful use of language. The next time he tries to tell a story, he finds he can only make a choking sound. Distraught, Haroun asks Rashid: “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” His grieving father is unable to answer. Then Rashid’s wife leaves him for their neighbour, a man with no imagination. Rashid is so talented a storyteller that politicians line up with “shiny faces and fake smiles and bags of hard cash” to convince him to appear at their rallies, so that his tales might win them votes.
The novel begins in “a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name”, where Haroun lives with his mother, Soraya, and his father, Rashid, a storyteller known to his friends as “The Ocean of Notions” and to his enemies as “The Shah of Blah”.
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